The session looked at keeping open practice open, in a time of rapid electoral shift away from the ideals of transnational cooperation, and the widespread manipulation of anxiety in relation to migration as well as of austerity budgeting, and the expanding precarity of labour. The panel invited attendees to join us in developing tactics that will sustain ethical open practice, supported and framed by five x five minute provocations.

Between us, we covered a lot of ground, taking a range of approaches. Kate Bowles wasn’t able to be with us physically, but was well represented by Frances Bell who read her provocation on desire lines and path making beautifully.

Vivien Rolfe (who will be co-chairing OER18) looked at how open relates to the focus on excellence, impact, metrics, performance indicators, market development and brand management in institutions, and asked ‘what can the Five Rs learn from the 3Rs?’

Sheila McNeil looked at the comfort and discomfort of open practitioners and practice within open and closed digital spaces, following up her reflections of the session and conference in this powerful post.

Frances Bell used a video story to ask how open are our research and education practices, looking at whether open access journals, blogs and web pages address or dissolve power relations.

I looked at the issue of structural inequality and violence against women in online environments, delivering a five minute version of the notes I’m sharing here. My aim was to convey how violence against women and girls exists on an ordinary, everyday spectrum, that implicitly curtails engagement and speech in online spaces.

Conversation and connections are critical to online communities and engagement in open practice and activities. What can we learn from present-day political attacks online, and new forms of censorship? What is acceptable and non-acceptable, and how might this translate to an effective way forward for the open movement?

Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) is a form of structural violence which reproduces and perpetuates structural inequality. It intersects with, and exacerbates, other forms of discrimination, including racism, agism, disabalism, classism, and heteronormativity.

The continuum of VAWG includes includes sexual harassment, sexual violence, coercive control, intimidation, humiliation and threats. It directly and indirectly limits and regulates the lives of women and girls. VAWG is detrimental to feelings of safety, physical and psychological health and well-being, and has negative social and financial impacts.

“Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) is already a problem of pandemic proportion; research shows that one in three women will experience some form of violence in her lifetime. The new problem of ‘cyber VAWG’ could significantly increase this staggering number .”

Violence Against Women and Girls Online

Online violence also reinforces and perpetuates systemic gender inequality, as forms of abuse are enacted and extended into digital spaces, and as new variants of abusive behaviour are developed in relation to the affordances of digital environments, applications, and systems.

The United Nations 2015 “wake up” report estimates that 73% of females worldwide have endured online abuse. Online VAGW limits speech, social participation, and digital inclusion. It “can have adverse impact on the exercise of and advocacy for free speech and other human rights.”

“Failure to address and solve cyber VAWG could significantly impede the digital inclusion of women everywhere, putting women at increasing disadvantage for being excluded from enjoying the benefits of ICTs and the Internet.“

“With the proliferation of the Internet, online violence against women has taken on a global dimension. Online crimes are not a ‘first world’ problem; they seamlessly follow the spread of the Internet.”

Violence Against Women and Girls – a normative cultural backdrop?

VAWA takes place within contexts where women and girls are disadvantaged in a host of ways:

Global inequality in girls access to education and literacy

Global internet user gap – this has increased from 11% in 2013 to 12% in 2016. Highest in Least Developed Countries (31%) and Africa (23%), but rates remain higher for men than women in all regions. (UN, 2017)

Lack of acknowledgement that a lot of what we talk about online positions the subject (‘deafening androcentrism‘)

OER & VAWG – working in the open examples

There are a range of direct examples of the ways in which online violence against women impacts all of us trying to work equitably in the open:

Educators, researchers, students and civilians talking about gendered issues in public networks – wether they identify as feminist or not

Wikipedia editors & subjects. Given the critical cultural importance of Wikipedia, underrepresentation of women both as editors and women as subjects is a politically urgent issue.

The personal and political cost of the tidal wave of false equivalency arguments relating to gender inequality from trolls, misogynists, and the naive.

Openly accessible feminist research, or research which focuses on girls and women

VAWG is structural violence

“For it matters to us what is said about us, who says it, and to whom it is said: having the opportunity to talk about one’s life, to give an account of it, to interpret it, is integral to leading that life rather than being led through it…part of human life, human living, is talking about it, and we can be sure that being silenced in one’s own account of one’s life is a kind of amputation that signals oppression.”

Taking action – the good news

What works:

Addressing the issue of violence against women challenges, rather than reinforces, established gender roles in most places.

“Countries with the strongest feminist movements tend, other things being equal, to have more comprehensive policies on violence against women than those with weaker or non-existent movements. This plays a more important role than left-wing parties, numbers of women legislators, or even national wealth.”

“International and regional treaties were most influential in countries with strong domestic feminist movements. Feminist activists magnify the effects of treaties in local contexts by drawing attention to any gaps between ratification and compliance with goals for equality…Treaties give normative leverage to national civil society organisations…International treaties alter the expectations of domestic actors and strengthen and even spark domestic mobilisation.”

VAWG increasingly recognised as reinforcing and perpetuating systemic discrimination and structural violence (‘a cause and consequence of gender inequality’), and online abuse is increasingly recognised as a part of this continum of violence.

Many kinds of online abuse and discrimination are now illegal, but hard fought for laws and rights will be eroded if abuse is normalised and accepted. Silence on issues relating to discrimination and hate supports the normalisation of abuse, which in turn effects what reasonable behaviour is.

Alek and I are delighted to welcome you all, so hello to everyone who is here with us on site, everyone who is attending the conference at distance, everyone who is experiencing the wonder of #oer17 in real-time, and everyone who is joining us from the future. We’re delighted to be part of a conversation with you all that is going to help shape the direction of the global open education movement.

On the 20th of April 2016, we announced the theme of OER17 would be ‘the Politics of Open’, in all of its aspects. In between then and now, #OER17 has become probably one of the most timely education conferences of the decade. This has quite a lot to do with Brexit (the UK’s referendum vote to leave the European Union) and the election in the US of Trump, but it’s not only because of these events. It’s also got to do with the ambition and the maturity of open education – where we are as a community and a movement. And it’s linked to the ongoing persistence of structural inequality – which isn’t at all new – and the emergence of the web as an everyday space.

I’m sharing a quote from American feminist activist Jo Freeman, who was writing 40 years ago, in the Tyranny of Structurelessness, about the ways in which organisations and movements are always structured by power relations implicitly.

“For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit.”

If we fail to acknowledge these relations explicitly, we mask power – we fail to acknowledge what is actually going on . And similarly, I’ve included a quote from French philosopher Hélène Cixous,

““I’m not political” we all know what that means! It’s just another way of saying: “My politics are someone else’s!”

Typically the politics of organisations and movements that emerge without scrutiny are mimicking and adopting the existing forms of discrimination. So this conference is a really important and timely event for us collectively to explore, reflect on and challenge issues of diversity, equality and inclusion, both within the community, within our community, and in relation to the work of that community.